Honeybees pollinate agricultural crops and native plant species around the world. Without the effort of the bees, many food supplies would suffer. The use of industrially imported and transported bees is not a trivial endeavor. Some large bee pollination companies have a million or more hives. Such operations may truck hundreds of thousands of bee hives across the United States, e.g., to California to pollinate the almond crop grown each year. These same hives are then trucked back across the country to pollinate blueberries and other crops that bloom later than almonds. Some people make their living from harvesting honey from their bee hives. Many bee hives are kept by amateur bee keepers who enjoy the hobby and inadvertently help neighbors through the work of their bees.
An aggressive loss of bee hives has begun to devastate the world's bee population. The loss is called Colony Collapse Disorder and its entire cause is not known. Some believe it is due to systemic pesticides used on large monoculture agricultural crops. In addition to outright death of the hives, Colony Collapse Disorder causes hives to be weakened and made vulnerable to a number of infections.
A long known infection suffered by bees is caused by the bacterium, Paenibacillus larvae. While the associated disease is called American Foulbrood disease (AFB), it is found worldwide. Infection with P. larvae is a serious disease of honeybees that eventually destroys the infected hive and further infects other hives. AFB affects the earliest stages of the larval development, just after the eggs are hatched. The young larvae are digested from the inside out by the bacteria. With the loss of the brood, the colony has no chance to recover.
Various treatments have been used for AFB, including antibiotics such as Oxytetracycline HCl and Tylosin tetrate. The bacteria quickly became resistant to the antibiotic, however, and residue from the chemicals has been found in honey. Thus, such treatment is not acceptable to the public. Additionally, the introduction of antibiotics into the environment can have serious secondary effects, such as causing other bacteria to develop general resistance to antibiotics.
The primary current treatment for the presence of P. larvae is burning of the hives, the bees, and the equipment used to support the beekeeping of that hive. State departments of agriculture have inspectors who test for the presence of P. larvae, and the treatment typically is done quickly. This is a drastic treatment, however, and the industry has been hesitant to impose regulations on the inspection and treatment of hives, or to provide any other meaningful regulations to find and address infections.